The Canadian Environmental Health Atlas is a project initiated in 2009 by a multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists, a geographer and a demographer to advance knowledge on environmental health. The aims of the Atlas are to:
1. Raise awareness of the myriad ways in which environmental influences affect human health;
2. Highlight the importance of environmental health in health promotion and disease prevention and:
3. Build a common vocabulary for inter-disciplinary communication and collaboration in the broad
domain of public health.
The Atlas is the first effort to synthesize Canadian research across a range of environmental health topics. It builds on the World Health Organization’s (2011) broad definition of environmental health: “Environmental health addresses all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behaviours. It encompasses the assessment and control of major environmental factors that can potentially affect health. It is targeted towards disease prevention and creating health-supportive environments.”
The Atlas is a single comprehensive picture of environmental health in Canada that will bring together in one document traditional routes of exposure (e.g. air, water and food quality) and the influence of human settlement on health (e.g. built environment, remote health and environmental degradation). The Atlas will continue to expand to cover a range of environmental health topics, with new sections being added regularly.